3/17/2010

A Bad Model

Following up on this post, particularly the additional information about ObamaCare Lite (also called MassHealth and RomneyCare), it this op-ed piece from the Wall Street Journal, covering the abject failure of 'mandatory' and subsidized health insurance in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. ObamaCare used this as a model. Unfortunately it's a bad one.

That RomneyCare is no better than ObamaCare should be undeniable. The chief problem with health care is COST. The second and third most significant problem with health care is COST and COST. Litigation drives cost, defensive medicine drives cost, bureaucracy drives costs, a price regulated public marker drives up costs in the private market, shortages of primary care physicians and nurses drives up costs, complex regulations which prevent an emergency room from sending a non-emergency patient to urgent care or a retail clinic drives up costs, mandates drive up costs…

The other problem with ObamaCare is that no one knows what the real goal is. At first it was the uninsured, then it was health care itself, then it was insurance reform. Not once has one elected member of government said in once concise statement what the goal is. Not once, and I think this is totally doable, has congress or the white house gone to the private market and said, price out the rates and benefits for the policies you intend to sell.

If the goal was reasonable access to quality health care at an affordable price that limited government and insurance company bureaucracy and maximized choice of plans and providers…then we could have a discussion…for example, what is reasonable access? What determines this? Most certainly it is not 44 days to get an appt with a primary care doctor!